The critical ingredient is a maverick mind. Focus on trading vehicles, strategies and time horizons that suit your personality. In a nutshell, it all comes down to: Do your own thing (independence); and do the right thing (discipline). -- Gil Blake

Thursday, November 24, 2011

October was just plain ugly for the portfolio. Didn't participate any in the market's advance. When the system did try to jump in...it got punished...as you can see from the 20% win ratio. Really frustrating.

I'm afraid November so far is much the same. As you will see when those numbers are reported.

Times like these are the most difficult for a system trader. You're following all your rules. You're doing all you're supposed to do. But, your portfolio is not showing any results. That's what tough about this game. It reminds me of the following quote...

"It's not the first guy out of the water, or the first one done with the run or the obstacle course. It's the guys who wants it bad enough and have the mental toughness to simply make it through. The ones who never give up." -- What it takes to be a Navy Seal by a retired Navy Seal.

No, not comparing system traders to Navy Seals. But, I do think a lot of what makes system traders successful is never giving up. Having the mental toughness to simply make it through times like this.

Speaking of trading in tough times...I found the paper shared by Mebane Faber to be fascinating. Basically, investing in low-beta stocks are similar in profile to selling puts. Earn a premium for taking all of the downside risk while not participating fully in market rallies. Lots of trading gems in that paper.

Okay, on to other things. I have been busy lately with releasing a few Python modules over on GitHub. The first one covers some basic statistical functions. Useful when you want a series of 50-day simple moving averages or the Welles Wilder moving averages to chart. Check it out here:

The other one covers pretty formatting of data. This package is very alpha - so could change at any time. But, this one is useful when you want to print a list of Python lists or dictionaries based on various formatting options. Check it out here: